Human cognitive process as a combination of the triad Knower - Knowing - Known and the language learning process as a combination of the triad Subject -Verb - Object will be understood in the light of ancient Indian wisdom as revealed in the Upanishads and will be presented. -/- A physics awareness of Advaita (No Two) concept will be used to model human mental processes such as – Knowing / Learning, Perception / Thinking / Logic, Understanding / (...) Experiencing / Awareness of meaning of a sentence. This awareness will further be used to prepare a flow-chart / block-diagram involving gross energy -transformations in human cognitive process. -/- This awareness will be corresponded to the awareness of Sri Aurobindo and Sri Ramana Maharshi on human consciousness. Implications of this model to natural language comprehension field of artificial intelligence will be presented combining with the ideas of connectionism. -/- . (shrink)

The cognitive processing of spatial relations in Euclidean diagrams is central to the diagram-based geometric practice of Euclid's Elements. In this study, we investigate this processing through two dichotomies among spatial relations—metric vs topological and exact vs co-exact—introduced by Manders in his seminal epistemological analysis of Euclid's geometric practice. To this end, we carried out a two-part experiment where participants were asked to judge spatial relations in Euclidean diagrams in a visual half field task design. In the first part, (...) we tested whether the processing of metric vs topological relations yielded the same hemispheric specialization as the processing of coordinate vs categorical relations. In the second part, we investigated the specific performance patterns for the processing of five pairs of exact/co-exact relations, where stimuli for the co-exact relations were divided into three categories depending on their distance from the exact case. Regarding the processing of metric vs topological relations, hemispheric differences were found for only a few of the stimuli used, which may indicate that other processing mechanisms might be at play. Regarding the processing of exact vs co-exact relations, results show that the level of agreement among participants in judging co-exact relations decreases with the distance from the exact case, and this for the five pairs of exact/co-exact relations tested. The philosophical implications of these empirical findings for the epistemological analysis of Euclid's diagram-based geometric practice are spelled out and discussed. (shrink)

Is attention a cognitive process? I reconstruct and critically assess an argument first proposed by Christopher Mole that it cannot be so. Mole’s argument is influential because it creates theoretical space for a unifying analysis of attention at the subject level (though it does not entail it). Prominent philosophers working on attention such as Wayne Wu and Philipp Koralus explicitly endorse it, while Sebastian Watzl endorses a related version, this despite their differing theoretical commitments. I show that Mole’s (...) argument is invalid, amend it to secure its validity, but argue that it still fails. I consider the extent to which the failure of Mole’s argument spreads to the versions offered by Wu, Koralus and Watlz. Mole’s argument fails because it equivocates between the set of conditions that suffice for constituting attention and the subset of those conditions which are salient, but insufficient, for constituting it. Reflection on this distinction has consequences for the individuation not just of attentional processes but all cognitive processes. (shrink)

What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arrive at the definition of representational mental process as (...) a process that is the bringing into being, sustaining, modifying, or terminating of a mental representation. We conclude by outlining some benefits and applications of this approach. (shrink)

In The Innocent Eye, Nico Orlandi argues that vision is not a cognitive process. In particular, she argues that forming subject-level visual representations that are available for reasoning should not itself be understood as a process of inference. This comes to the claim that vision (properly so-called) is a process that produces representations but is not best understood as a process that uses representations.

Whereas there is extensive documentation that attribute framing influences the content of peoples thought, we generally know less about how it affects the processes assumed to precede those thoughts. While existing explanations for attribute framing effects rely completely on valence-based associative processing, the results obtained in the present study are also consistent with the notion that negative framing stimulates more effortful and thorough information processing than positive framing. Specifically, results from a simulated business decision-making experiment showed that decision makers receiving (...) negatively framed information had significantly better recall than those receiving positively framed information. Furthermore, decision makers in the negative framing condition were less confident than decision makers in the positively framed condition. Finally, compared to a no-framing condition, decision makers receiving positive framing deviated significantly more in evaluation than decision makers receiving negative framing did. (shrink)

In what follows I propose to bring out certain methodological properties of projects of modelling the tacit realm that bear on the kinds of modelling done in connection with scientific cognition by computer as well as by ethnomethodological sociologists, both of whom must make some claims about the tacit in the course of their efforts to model cognition. The same issues, I will suggest, bear on the project of a cognitive psychology of science as well.

This essay presents the conditional probability of co-contribution account of the individuation of cognitive systems (CPC) and argues that CPC provides an attractive basis for a theory of the cognitive self. The argument proceeds in a largely indirect way, by emphasizing empirical challenges faced by an approach that relies entirely on predictive processing (PP) mechanisms to ground a theory of the cognitive self. Given the challenges faced by PP-based approaches, we should prefer a theory of the (...) class='Hi'>cognitive self of the sort CPC offers, one that accommodates variety in the kinds of mechanism that, when integrated, constitute a cognitive system (and thus the cognitive self), to a theory according to which the cognitive self is composed of essentially one kind of thing, for instance, prediction-error minimization mechanisms. The final section focuses on one of the central functions of the cognitive self: to engage in conscious reasoning. It is argued that the phenomenon of conscious, deliberate reasoning poses an apparently insoluble problem for a PP-based view, one that seems to rest on a structural limitation of predictive-processing models. In a nutshell, conscious reasoning is a single-stream phenomenon, but, in order for PP to apply, two streams of activity must be involved, a prediction stream and an input stream. Thus, with regard to the question of the nature of the self, PP-based views must yield to an alternative approach, regardless of whether proponents of the predictive processing, as a comprehensive theory of cognition, can handle the various empirical challenges canvassed in the preceding section. (shrink)

Despite their popularity, relatively scant attention has been paid to the upshot of Bayesian and predictive processing models of cognition for views of overall cognitive architecture. Many of these models are hierarchical ; they posit generative models at multiple distinct "levels," whose job is to predict the consequences of sensory input at lower levels. I articulate one possible position that could be implied by these models, namely, that there is a continuous hierarchy of perception, cognition, and action control comprising (...) levels of generative models. I argue that this view is not entailed by a general Bayesian/predictive processing outlook. Bayesian approaches are compatible with distinct formats of mental representation. Focusing on Bayesian approaches to motor control, I argue that the junctures between different types of mental representation are places where the transitivity of hierarchical prediction may be broken, and I consider the upshot of this conclusion for broader discussions of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis maintains that cognitive processes and systems can, on occasion, stretch to include parts of the brain, body, and world. One outstanding puzzle facing this view is the “recruitment puzzle.” The recruitment puzzle asks how cognisers are able to reliably recruit internal and external resources such that they form extended systems. Andy Clark has recently suggested that predictive processing helps to address this puzzle. I argue that, while promising, Clark’s proposal remains incomplete. I suggest that Clark’s (...) proposal can be productively extended by disambiguating two important senses of recruitment: ready-to-hand and adaptive recruitment. After outlining the recruitment puzzle and Clark’s proposal, I suggest that careful attention to these two senses of recruitment helps to reveal further constructive ways of developing the extended mind thesis. (shrink)

In this paper I study the development of arithmetical cognition with the focus on metaphorical thinking. In an approach developing on Lakoff and Núñez, I propose one particular conceptual metaphor, the Process → Object Metaphor, as a key element in understanding the development of mathematical thinking.

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be (...) a necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues that it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post-stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling's classic partial report studies, change-detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics' in challenging as well a longstanding and common view of (...) visual memory as involving declining capacity across a series of stores. We conclude by discussing the relation of probabilistic perceptual representations and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

De Neys (2021) argues that the debate between single- and dual-process theorists of thought has become both empirically intractable and scientifically inconsequential. I argue that this is true only under the traditional framing of the debate—when single- and dual-process theories are understood as claims about whether thought processes share the same defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments) or have two different defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments autonomously versus via access to a central working memory capacity), respectively. But (...) if single- and dual-process theories are understood in cognitive modeling terms as claims about whether thought processes function to implement one or two broad types of algorithms, respectively, then the debate becomes scientifically consequential and, presumably, empirically tractable. So, I argue, the correct response to the current state of the debate is not to abandon it, as De Neys suggests, but to reframe it as a debate about cognitive models. (shrink)

The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal. Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task (...) in one way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive processing. I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont 2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes (respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal (mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition. At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition, I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms, meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape, kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal processing in embodied cognition. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study between predictive processing (PP, or predictive coding) and cognitive dissonance (CD) theory. The theory of CD, one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is shown to be highly compatible with recent developments in PP. This is particularly evident in the notion that both theories deal with strategies to reduce perceived error signals. However, reasons exist to update the theory of CD to one of “predictive dissonance.” First, the hierarchical (...) PP framework can be helpful in understanding varying nested levels of CD. If dissonance arises from a cascade of downstream and lateral predictions and consequent prediction errors, dissonance can exist at a multitude of scales, all the way up from sensory perception to higher order cognitions. This helps understand the previously problematic dichotomy between “dissonant cognitive relations” and “dissonant psychological states,” which are part of the same perception-action process while still hierarchically distinct. Second, since PP is action-oriented, it can be read to support recent action-based models of CD. Third, PP can potentially help us understand the recently speculated evolutionary origins of CD. Here, the argument is that responses to CD can instill meta-learning which serves to prevent the overfitting of generative models to ephemeral local conditions. This can increase action-oriented ecological rationality and enhanced capabilities to interact with a rich landscape of affordances. The downside is that in today’s world where social institutions such as science a priori separate noise from signal, some reactions to predictive dissonance might propagate ecologically unsound (underfitted, confirmation-biased) mental models such as climate denialism. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis (EM) asserts that some cognitive processes are (partially) composed of actions consisting of the manipulation and exploitation of environmental structures. Might some processes at the root of social cognition have a similarly extended structure? In this paper, I argue that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—the negotiation and management of ‘‘we-space”—and that some of the expressive actions involved in the negotiation and management of we-space (gesture, touch, facial and whole-body expressions) drive (...) basic processes of interpersonal understanding and thus do genuine social-cognitive work. Social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven and at least partially constituted by environmental (non-neural) scaffolding. Challenging the Theory of Mind paradigm, I draw upon research from gesture studies, developmental psychology, and work on Moebius Syndrome to support this thesis. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such (...) as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called “conscious thought” in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like “mind wandering” into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the “self-representational blink” (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological “unit of identification” (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking (...) an embedded cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological (...) computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted. (shrink)

The basic problem of this investigation concerns how is it that an individual "understands" or "comprehends" what another communicates and, sometimes, even what he does not communicate but of which he has experience. We would like here to take stock of the models that psychology currently has available to study the phenomenon of interpersonal understanding,using a cognitive approach, and to propose some working hypotheses that in our opinion could guide further research.

I argue that virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism are complementary. They do not give competing accounts of epistemic virtue. Rather they explain the excellent functioning of different parts of our cognitive apparatus. Reliabilist virtue designates the excellent functioning of fast and context-specific Type 1 cognitive processes, while responsibilist virtue means an excellent functioning of effortful and reflective Type 2 cognitive processes. This account unifies reliabilist and responsibilist virtue theory. But the virtues are not unified by designating some (...) epistemic norm that both aim at. Instead, I unify them through their cognitive foundations. Because Type 1 and Type 2 cognition are complementary, reliabilist and responsibilist virtues are complementary. Thereby, this dual-process theory of epistemic virtue gives a naturalised account of virtues as well as an explanation of how reliabilism and responsibilism relate. This approach offers a solution for both the generality problem and the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology; additionally it preserves the epistemological autonomy of each virtue type. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of (...) Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

Mencius, referred to as second sage in Chinese philosophy history, grounds his theory about original goodness of human nature on psychological components by bringing in something new down ancient ages. Including the principles of virtuous action associated with Confucius to his doctrine, but by composing them along psychosocial development, he theorizes utterly out of the ordinary that makes all the difference to the school. In his argument stated a positive opinion, he explains the method of forming individuals' moral awareness by (...) means of inseparable integrity of feelings and thoughts, saying human being are born innately good. According to Mencius, heart-mind correlation is the motivational complement of inner incentives. Knowledge and virtue, which are extensions of inborn goodness, comprehended intuitively; then affective motives respond to circumstance, what is learned transmits to cognitive process and eventually behavior emerges. Comparing during the years of Warring State period he lived, in western geography Aristotle, who is one of the pioneers of Greek philosophy, argues deductive and inductive methods in mental activity. On the other hand, Mencius uses analogical reasoning throughout his self-titled work. This essay is an attempt to assert that most postulates of developmental theories, which have been considered an integral part of modern psychology, begin with Mencius in early era. Secondly, this study also aims to discuss the main paradigm of Mencius across emotivist-rationalist opposition, which keeps emotion above thought as well as reason above emotion. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that externalist accounts of cognition such as Clark and Chalmers' (1998) “active externalism” lead to an explosion of knowledge that is caused by online resources such as Wikipedia and Google. I argue that externalist accounts of cognition imply that subjects who integrate mobile Internet access in their cognitive routines have millions of standing beliefs on unexpected issues such as the birth dates of Moroccan politicians or the geographical coordinates of villages in (...) southern Indonesia. Although many externalists propose criteria for the bounds of cognition that are designed to avoid this explosion of knowledge, I argue that these criteria are flawed and that active externalism has to accept that information resources such as Wikipedia and Google constitute extended cognitive processes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that looking at the concept of neural function through the lens of cognition alone risks cognitive myopia: it leads neuroscientists to focus only on mechanisms with cognitive functions that process behaviorally relevant information when conceptualizing “neural function”. Cognitive myopia tempts researchers to neglect neural mechanisms with noncognitive functions which do not process behaviorally relevant information but maintain and repair neural and other systems of the body. Cognitive myopia similarly affects (...) philosophy of neuroscience because scholars overlook noncognitive functions when analyzing issues surrounding e.g., functional decomposition or the multifunctionality of neural structures. I argue that we can overcome cognitive myopia by adopting a patchwork approach that articulates cognitive and noncognitive “patches” of the concept of neural function. Cognitive patches describe mechanisms with causally specific effects on cognition and behavior which are likely operative in transforming sensory or other inputs into motor outputs. Noncognitive patches describe mechanisms that lack such specific effects; these mechanisms are enabling conditions for cognitive functions to occur. I use these distinctions to characterize two noncognitive functions at the mesoscale of neural circuits: subsistence functions like breathing are implemented by central pattern generators and are necessary to maintain the life of the organism. Infrastructural functions like gain control are implemented by canonical microcircuits and prevent neural system damage while cognitive processing occurs. By adding conceptual patches that describe these functions, a patchwork approach can overcome cognitive myopia and help us explain how the brain’s capacities as an information processing device are constrained by its ability to maintain and repair itself as a physiological apparatus. (shrink)

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive (...) science, the set of imaginative processes is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

Latimer & Stevens (1997) develop a useful framework for discussing issues surrounding the definition and explanation of perceptual gestalts. They use this framework to raise some doubts about the possibility of “holistic” perceptual processing. However, I suspect that these doubts ultimately stem from assumptions about the nature of representation and processing in the brain, rather than from an analysis of part/whole concepts. I attempt to spell out these assumptions, and sketch an alternative perspective (deriving from Gestalt theory) that has the (...) potential to make sense of holism in perception. (shrink)

Following Marr’s famous three-level distinction between explanations in cognitive science, it is often accepted that focus on modeling cognitive tasks should be on the computational level rather than the algorithmic level. When it comes to mathematical problem solving, this approach suggests that the complexity of the task of solving a problem can be characterized by the computational complexity of that problem. In this paper, I argue that human cognizers use heuristic and didactic tools and thus engage in (...) class='Hi'>cognitive processes that make their problem solving algorithms computationally suboptimal, in contrast with the optimal algorithms studied in the computational approach. Therefore, in order to accurately model the human cognitive tasks involved in mathematical problem solving, we need to expand our methodology to also include aspects relevant to the algorithmic level. This allows us to study algorithms that are cognitively optimal for human problem solvers. Since problem solving methods are not universal, I propose that they should be studied in the framework of enculturation, which can explain the expected cultural variance in the humanly optimal algorithms. While mathematical problem solving is used as the case study, the considerations in this paper concern modeling of cognitive tasks in general. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual (...) learning that provides empirical evidence that cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

The debate about scientific realism is concerned with the relation between our scientific theories and the world. Scientific realists argue that our best theories or components of those theories correspond to the world. Anti-realists deny such a correspondence. Traditionally, this central issue in the philosophy of science has been approached by focusing on the theories themselves (e.g., by looking at theory change or the underlying experimental context). I propose a relatively unexplored way to approach this old debate. In addition to (...) focusing on the theory, we should focus on the theorizer. More precisely, in order to determine on which component of a theory we should hinge a realist commitment, we should analyze the cognitive processes underlying scientific theorizing. In this paper I do just that. Drawing from recent developments in the cognitive sciences and evolutionary epistemology, I formulate some tentative conclusions. The aim of this paper is not so much to defend a particular position in the debate on scientific realism but to showcase the value of taking a cognitive perspective in the debate. (shrink)

Many models of cognitive ability and disability rely on the idea of cognition as abstract reasoning processes implemented in the brain. Research in cognitive science, however, emphasizes the way that our cognitive skills are embodied in our more basic capacities for sensing and moving, and the way that tools in the external environment can extend the cognitive abilities of our brains. This chapter addresses the implications of research in embodied cognition and extended cognition for how we (...) think about cognitive impairment and rehabilitation, how cognitive reserve mitigates neural impairment, and the distinction between medical and social models of disability. (shrink)

Extended cognition holds that cognitive processes sometimes leak into the world (Dawson, 2013). A recent trend among proponents of extended cognition has been to put pressure on phenomena thought to be safe havens for internalists (Sneddon, 2011; Wilson, 2010; Wilson & Lenart, 2014). This paper attempts to continue this trend by arguing that music perception is an extended phenomenon. It is claimed that because music perception involves the detection of musical invariants within an “acoustic array”, the interaction between the (...) auditory system and the musical invariants can be characterized as an extended computational cognitive system. In articulating this view, the work of J. J. Gibson (1966, 1986) and Robert Wilson (1994, 1995, 2004) is drawn on. The view is defended from several objections and its implications outlined. The paper concludes with a comparison to Krueger’s (2014) view of the “musically extended emotional mind”. (shrink)

Extended cognition theorists argue that cognitive processes constitutively depend on resources that are neither organically composed, nor located inside the bodily boundaries of the agent, provided certain conditions on the integration of those processes into the agent’s cognitive architecture are met. Epistemologists, however, worry that in so far as such cognitively integrated processes are epistemically relevant, agents could thus come to enjoy an untoward explosion of knowledge. This paper develops and defends an approach to cognitive integration—cluster-model functionalism—which (...) finds application in both domains of inquiry, and which meets the challenge posed by putative cases of cognitive or epistemic bloat. (shrink)

Cognitive states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions, may influence how we perceive people and objects. If this is the case, are those influences worse when they occur implicitly rather than explicitly? Here we show that cognitive penetration in perception generally involves an implicit component. First, the process of influence is implicit, making us unaware that our perception is misrepresenting the world. This lack of awareness is the source of the epistemic threat raised by cognitive penetration. (...) Second, the influencing state can be implicit, though it can also be or become explicit. Being unaware of the content of the influencing state, we argue, does not make as much difference to the epistemic threat as it does to the epistemic responsibility of the agent. Implicit influencers cannot be examined for their accuracy and justification, and cannot be voluntarily accepted by the perceiver. Conscious awareness, however, is not sufficient for attributing blame to the agent. An equally important condition is the degree of control that they can exercise to change the contents that influence perception or stop their influence. Here we suggest that such control can also result from social influence, and that cognitive penetrability of perception is therefore also a social issue. (shrink)

I develop an epistemic focal bias account of certain patterns of judgments about knowledge ascriptions by integrating it with a general dual process framework of human cognition. According to the focal bias account, judgments about knowledge ascriptions are generally reliable but systematically fallible because the cognitive processes that generate them are affected by what is in focus. I begin by considering some puzzling patters of judgments about knowledge ascriptions and sketch how a basic focal bias account seeks to (...) account for them. In doing so, I argue that the basic focal bias account should be integrated in a more general framework of human cognition. Consequently, I present some central aspects of a prominent general dual process theory of human cognition and discuss how focal bias may figure at various levels of processing. On the basis of this discussion, I attempt to categorize the relevant judgments about knowledge ascriptions. Given this categorization, I argue that the basic epistemic focal bias account of certain contrast effects and salient alternatives effects can be plausibly integrated with the dual process framework. Likewise, I try to explain the absence of strong intuitions in cases of far-fetched salient alternatives. As a manner of conclusion, I consider some methodological issues concerning the relationship between cognitive psychology, experimental data and epistemological theorizing. -/- . (shrink)

Learning from contemporary natural, formal, and social sciences, especially from current biology, as well as from humanities, particularly contemporary philosophy of nature, requires updates of our old definitions of cognition and intelligence. The result of current insights into basal cognition of single cells and evolution of multicellular cognitive systems within the framework of extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) helps us better to understand mechanisms of cognition and intelligence as they appear in nature. New understanding of information and processes of physical (...) (morphological) computation contribute to novel possibilities that can be used to inspire the development of abiotic cognitive systems (cognitive robotics), cognitive computing and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Zenon Pylyshyn argues that cognitively driven attentional effects do not amount to cognitive penetration of early vision because such effects occur either before or after early vision. Critics object that in fact such effects occur at all levels of perceptual processing. We argue that Pylyshyn’s claim is correct—but not for the reason he emphasizes. Even if his critics are correct that attentional effects are not external to early vision, these effects do not satisfy Pylyshyn’s requirements that the effects be (...) direct and exhibit semantic coherence. In addition, we distinguish our defense from those found in recent work by Raftopoulos and by Firestone and Scholl, argue that attention should not be assimilated to expectation, and discuss alternative characterizations of cognitive penetrability, advocating a kind of pluralism. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between several ideas about the mind and cognition. The hypothesis of extended cognition claims that cognitive processes can and do extend outside the head, that elements of the world around us can actually become parts of our cognitive systems. It has recently been suggested that the hypothesis of extended cognition is entailed by one of the foremost philosophical positions on the nature of the mind: functionalism, the thesis that mental states are defined by (...) their functional relations rather than by their physical constituents. Furthermore, it has been claimed that functionalism entails a version of extended cognition which is sufficiently radical as to be obviously false. I survey the debate and propose several ways of avoiding this conclusion, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing the hypothesis of extended cognition from the related notion of the extended mind. (shrink)

Many traditional theories of creativity put heavy emphasis on an incubation stage in creative cognitive processes. The basic phenomenon is a familiar one: we are working on a task or problem, we leave it aside for some period of time, and when we return attention to the task we have some new insight that services completion of the task. This feature, combined with other ostensibly mysterious features of creativity, has discouraged naturalists from theorizing creativity. This avoidance is misguided: we (...) can maintain unconscious incubated cognition as (sometimes) part of the creative process and we can explain it in scientifically responsible ways. This paper, focusing on the effects of attention on the functional networking of the brain, attempts just such an explanation. It also serves to assuage the naturalist's scepticism about other features of creative cognition. The broad upshot, one would hope, is that philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists return some attention to the long neglected topic of creativity. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers alike debate whether various systems such as plants and bacteria exercise cognition. One strategy for resolving such debates is to ground claims about nonhuman cognition in evidence from mathematical models of cognitive capacities. In this article, I show that proponents of this strategy face two major challenges: demarcating phenomenological models from process models and overcoming underdetermination by model fit. I argue that even if the demarcation problem is resolved, fitting a process model to behavioral (...) data is, on its own, not strong evidence for any cognitive process, let alone processes shared with humans. (shrink)

The journal of Cognitive Computation is defined in part by the notion that biologically inspired computational accounts are at the heart of cognitive processes in both natural and artificial systems. Many studies of various important aspects of cognition (memory, observational learning, decision making, reward prediction learning, attention control, etc.) have been made by modelling the various experimental results using ever-more sophisticated computer programs. In this manner progressive inroads have been made into gaining a better understanding of the many (...) components of cognition. Concomitantly in both science and science fiction the hope is periodically re-ignited that a manmade system can be engineered to be fully cognitive and conscious purely in virtue of its execution of an appropriate computer program. However, whilst the usefulness of the computational metaphor in many areas of psychology and neuroscience is clear, it has not gone unchallenged and in this article I will review a group of philosophical arguments that suggest either such unequivocal optimism in computationalism is misplaced—computation is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognition—or panpsychism (the belief that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of elements each of which is conscious) is true. I conclude by highlighting an alternative metaphor for cognitive processes based on communication and interaction. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation ‘the essence’ of a system’s modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetration need not have any straightforward bearing on the conjecture that perceptual processing (...) is composed of nothing but informationally encapsulated modules, the conjecture that each and every perceptual computation is performed by an informationally encapsulated module, and the consequences perceptual encapsulation was traditionally expected to have for a perception-cognition border, the epistemology of perception and cognitive science. With these points in view, I propose that particularly plausible cases of cognitive penetration would actually seem to evince the encapsulation of perceptual systems rather than refute/problematize this conjecture. (shrink)

The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) holds that cognitive processes are essentially computational, and hence computation provides the scientific key to explaining mentality. The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) holds that representational content is the key feature in distinguishing mental from non-mental systems. I argue that there is a deep incompatibility between these two theoretical frameworks, and that the acceptance of CTM provides strong grounds for rejecting RTM. The focal point of the incompatibility is the fact that representational content (...) is extrinsic to formal procedures as such, and the intended interpretation of syntax makes no difference to the execution of an algorithm. So the unique 'content' postulated by RTM is superfluous to the formal procedures of CTM. And once these procedures are implemented in a physical mechanism, it is exclusively the causal properties of the physical mechanism that are responsible for all aspects of the system's behaviour. So once again, postulated content is rendered superfluous. To the extent that semantic content may appear to play a role in behaviour, it must be syntactically encoded within the system, and just as in a standard computational artefact, so too with the human mind/brain - it's pure syntax all the way down to the level of physical implementation. Hence 'content' is at most a convenient meta-level gloss, projected from the outside by human theorists, which itself can play no role in cognitive processing. (shrink)

Positing implicit social cognitive processes is common in the social cognition literature. We see it in discussions of theories of mentalizing, empathy, and infants' social-cognitive capacities. However, there is little effort to articulate what counts as implicit social cognition in general, so theorizing about implicit social cognition is extremely disparate across each of these sub-domains. In this paper, I argue that Michael Brownstein’s account of implicit cognition promises to be a fruitful, unifying account of implicit cognition in general, (...) and it is well suited to explain implicit cognition in various sub-domains of social cognition. (shrink)

As part of a larger study, predictors of self-blame were investigated in a sample of 149 undergraduate sexual assault survivors. Each participant completed questionnaires regarding their preassault, peritraumatic, and post assault experiences and participated in an individual interview. Results confirmed the central hypothesis that, although several established correlates independently relate to self-blame, only cognitive content and process variables—negative self-cognitions and counterfactual-preventability cognitions—uniquely predict self-blame in a multivariate model.

A cognitive science perspective of yoga system of thought will be developed in conjugation with the Samkhya Darsana. This development will be further advanced using Advaita Vedanta and will be translated into modern scientific terms to arrive at an idea about cognition process. The stalling of the cognitive process and stilling the mind will be critically discussed in the light of this perspective. This critical analysis and translation into cognitive science and modern scientific terms will (...) be presented together with its implications and applications to the disciplines of mind-machine modeling, natural language comprehension branch of artificial intelligence and physiological psychology. (shrink)

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral (...) practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology. (shrink)